PDMS-based conductive elastomeric composite with 3D reduced graphene oxide conductive network for flexible strain sensor

In this work, a novel flexible strain sensor based on reduced graphene oxide/ polydimethylsiloxane (rGO/PDMS) conductive elastomeric composites with a 3D conductive network was developed by latex assembly technique for the first time. Herein, benefiting from the excluded volume of the latex particles, the rGO selectively located in the interstitial space between them, which leading to formation of a 3D conductive network with ultralow amount of rGO (0.44 vol%), thereby enabled the rGO/PDMS composites to be mechanically robust and flexible. Noteworthy, each PDMS latex particle is analogous to a “elastic balloon”, and thus assisting the destruction and reconstruction of the conductive network under external stimulus, which endow the sensor with excellent sensitivity. Specially, the strain sensors showed superior sensitivity (44.01), a wide strain range (300%) and good stability (2500 cycles). Owing to these advantages, the sensor works effectively in detecting human’s finger movements, facial muscles, voice recognition and physiological signals.